Angélica Maria Valdés Valderrama

Project focus: The Fellow will focus on developing tools to assess the impact of CienciaCoLab, a collaborative and participatory space that provides tools, workshops, mentoring, and seed funding for leaders in Puerto Rico to design and implement community science projects.

Angélica Valdés Valderrama is a social scientist trained in political science, economics, public health nutrition, and food policy. She is currently a doctoral candidate specializing in the integration and evaluation of equity in nutrition programs at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Her research focuses on assessing innovations and emerging technologies for federal nutrition programs (SNAP and WIC) and food retail options through a health equity lens. She also collaborates with the ChildObesity 180 research team at Tufts University. Current notable awards include the Yale Ciencia Academy Fellowship (2022-23), the Tufts-USDA Fellowship in Childhood Obesity Prevention (2019-23) and a HER-NOPREN Healthy Food Retail Early Career Scholar grant (2021-22). She earned her M.S. degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM) where she led a study of the effect of the Puerto Rico Nutrition Assistance Program on employment and participated in another study about barriers to and facilitators for healthy eating among early adolescents in PR. Prior to that, Angélica received a B.A. in Economics and a B.A. in Political Science, also from UPRM. Angélica is passionate about centering equity in food systems and nutrition and is hopes to continue engaging in decolonial, anti-racist, and community-centered research and advocacy. Beyond academia, Angélica enjoys taking care of her plants, trying new foods, and adventuring outdoors.